Extreme3D was a spline-based moderer with roots far back in Mac history. It ended up in Macromedias hands. (Actually, 2 or so older 3d Mac programs were merged into one to form Extreme3D) It got up to version 2 if I recall before it was killed by Macromedia. For a while, it was bundled with Director, etc..

You work for Macromedia and ya don't even know the history.. Tis tis.. One more slip and New Tek will give you the (kiki stock) HAMMER.. (You really need to know your stuff to get that inside joke. )

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Ohhhhh, didn't even know bout that!! BTW, did you know that Final Cut Pro was based on a Macromedia technology called Key Grip? Apple bought it from MM. Actually, I've been a Flash user since version 5. I'm only 14 so I don't remember alot of stuff from way back. Well, I do remember [back when I was younger] downloading Shockwave so I could play web games on my library's computer.

Shivers:
>And why do all of danlab's games, and lugaru and such look better than h2o?
Remember, H2O's art is cartoonie art made all in Flash. Plus I don't have Photoshop. Like I said, the game looks a bit different now, so mocking it isn't a good idea. And really, does it matter? Graphics don't matter to me, and most of my friends, gameplay does. The first Sonic game, for example. The first Lemmings game. The first Metroid game. The first Warcraft game. The first Myth game. The first Doom game.
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I was defending you AJ. You haven't displayed the level of accomplishment that DanLab and David have. Kind of like not winning as many deathmatches.... if it were in that context you'd be...well a lot of gib, DanLab would be unstoppable and David would be on a killing spree.

I had more to say but I ended up closing the window in mid post after testing Wings3D one more time. Oh yeah, put that AE and LW to use and H20 could really kick things up a notch..all it takes is rendered sprites to make a difference...uh..aside from gameplay of course.

On Wings3D:
Interesting app. Why didn't you suggest to Carlos to adopt it, OSC? It could use developer support, is open source, runs native in OS X, it would sure beat rehashing early PPC code from PatchDance. That would move it into mainstream game dev use much faster than anything else.
It has a sourceforge page but I don't see any reason not to push a more Mac-centric build of it hosted here.
Between the source for Wings3D and Blender something really great could be made.

Ah camacho has replied before I did...Guess only us old guys know Extreme3D.

I think the Mac OS X port of Wings3D is very good already... I mean, it uses native save panels, opens docs double-clicked from the Finder, &c. It's written in Erlang (what?), though, so there's a slightly higher barrier to development than for most open-source programs.

I definitely think that this is where our community should be putting its weight, though. I mean, Meshwork is not free and is buggy and trapped somewhere in the mid-nineties, Blender is a disaster, and as we saw in the "what do you want in a modeler" thread, creating one from scratch would be a monumental task. Cinema4DXL, Maya, LightWave, &c are fine for those who can afford them, but the rest of us need something to model in!

Quote:Originally posted by igame3d You haven't displayed the level of accomplishment that DanLab and David have. Kind of like not winning as many deathmatches.... if it were in that context you'd be...well a lot of gib, DanLab would be unstoppable and David would be on a killing spree.

I had more to say but I ended up closing the window in mid post after testing Wings3D one more time. Oh yeah, put that AE and LW to use and H20 could really kick things up a notch..all it takes is rendered sprites to make a difference...uh..aside from gameplay of course.

Well, yeah, alot of my work has been simple little demos (ie: NSURL resource loading, fluid dynamics, scripting language implementation, making a simple tile engine in GL, making a good AI system in Flash, etc.) Anyway, though, my little Flash based TCG's gonna be on Miniclip.com. And I have 2 Director games that are gonna be on Shockwave.com. I should take gamedev more seriously I guess. I would if it was my main source of income, but it isn't, though. I don't get alot of time for coding anyway (school, entertainment, friends, etc.). And I should close Yahoo Messenger so I won't get email alerts that people are replying to this thread.

Using LW for H2O's sprite means I'd have to spend extra time modelling and texturing the sprites. I'm just working on improving the Flash GFX now, though. The new H2O is *much* different from the one in the crappy, haven't-been-updated-since-March screenshots on the site. In fact, I'm gonna go take em down now.

I use meshwork for actual 3d models, and cinema 4d for texture mapping and polyreduction.

I use an old version of meshwork, because an 'undo' command (even if its unreliable) is VERY necessary, at least for me since I have been known to make mistakes from time to time. However other than that, Meshwork's low-poly modelling is very intuitive and useful.

Cinema 4d's modelling is much more powerful and polished (i.e. automatically making the faces face in the same direction and such) but I still use Meshwork for modelling because I'm used to it and it's interface is much more mac-like.

Can't comment on Lightwave, or H20's gameplay, because I've never tried either of them.

Quote:Originally posted by David I use an old version of meshwork, because an 'undo' command (even if its unreliable) is VERY necessary, at least for me since I have been known to make mistakes from time to time.

Yeah, I wonder that Joe Strout decided to give up on it rather than try to fix it.

General Uses of some 3D apps (note: these 3D apps can be used alone, though)

Amapi...very good modeller
Maya...king of animation, powerful NURBS, and dynamics/effects
LightWave...polygonal modelling
Universe...Fast rendering, powerful NURBS modeller
FormZ...Architectural modelling
Amorhpium...easy to use, powerful modeller
Cinema...all in one, easy to use, Mac user friendly tool
3ds max...one of the best 3D packages available; VERY good for gamedev (note: I know it's PC only )
Carrara Studio...powerful and easy to use all in one app. Has a Kai Krause UI
Bryce...we all know what this is
Vue d Espirit...Bryce killer
Poser...human and animal creation and animation program. Good intergration with used with LightWave and 3ds max
MotionBuilder...Character Studio killer

Note: It's late down here (and I'm tired) as I type this so this may not sound correct. I'll edit in the morning.

>well a lot of gib
No, I'd Flash em!!! I'm not just "a lot of gib" either. I'm more of OSC style, alot of knowledge (of Flash, PHP, Java, etc.), little demos here and there (well, he's done more than that), etc. And then sharing that knowledge. H2O's not my first "big" project either. Another one I had started pretty early but I had to stop because of the demanding art.

Well, I started out on the bug infested piece of junk Animation Master, as igame3d puts it To Hash's credit Animation Master makes animating easy. Animation Master has a lot of potential and if the developers took some time to squash the bugs I wouldn't hesitate to buy it. I haven't tried the latest version so don't dismiss it because of what I say. I used Animation Master to create the character models for my game, "Ancient Arena" (there is a thread about it in the Announcements forum). I also used it to create part of a short and an assortment of short animation sequences.

I also own Lightwave and I love the modeller, though it took a while to get used to polygons after using Animation Master's patches. I haven't done much character animation with Lightwave so I won't comment on that. Lightwave in OS X is very stable and reliable even with high poly counts. The renderer is capable of producing very realistic results if that's what you're going for.

If you check out galleries for different 3D apps you'll see that most of them are capable of creating very nice images. You can argue that app A doesn't have this feature or that feature but in the end it probably doesn't matter. You can almost always work around these kind of things and every app will have its strengths and its shortcomings.

Shivers: At Creation Engine, LightWave is more expensie than Cinema. But that reaallly doesn't matter. (Get this, 3ds max is more expensive than both of em.) And also, I was just suprised that 3ds max was used to do War3's cinematics. Ever since I first saw them I said "That was made in Maya!!!" and I never searched for Aaron Chan's interview with CG Focus (in this interview, he says that 3ds max, not Maya, was used).